Lee Hazelwood was everything a wilfully unsuccessful rock'n'roll star should be: cool, louche, edgy, odd, unique. Everything he did was different, creating a style and an image that shouldn't have worked but always did. His deep baritone intoning camp voiceovers or interplaying with sexy leading ladies gave an underplayed aura and sardonic twist to his music. All of his records are slightly ridiculous, overdone melodramas telling the stories of losers and wasters and failed romances. But in camping up the absurd quality of life, his music becomes deeply moving. It's sentimental and sympathetic at the same time, and truly wonderful.
Trouble was Lee Hazelwood's first record, a weird story about Trouble and its hapless inhabitants. Each small song is introduced by Lee's voiced musings on life, its characters, and its setbacks. It set the tone for the rest of his career: bizarre, individual, sentimental, moving, and utterly cool. 
This record may not be to everyone's tastes, but I love it. A series of country covers, Lee and Ann Margret, feisty sexy Swede, duet, one of many great partnerships that Lee had in his career. Like many of his records, the songs tell the stories of failed relationships and the desperate ties that bring people together.
This is Lee Hazelwood's best record. He moved to Sweden in the 60s; while there he made a documentary, which I've never seen but must be quite odd, for which this is the soundtrack. It's an odd collection of love songs and angry anti-Vietnam protest songs, climaxing in a dazzingly camp but beautiful version of a Swedish folk song, "Vem Kan Segla," "Who Can Sail Without the Wind?"
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